Movie Breakdown: Inherent Vice

People are doing traditional-style reviews all over the web, so we decided to try something different.  In each “breakdown” we’ll take a look at what a film’s marketing led us to believe, how the movie actually played, and then what we learned from it all.  Read on!

The Impression:

Paul Thomas Anderson returns with Inherent Vice, which looks like a quirky 70s-enthused crime drama.

The Reality:

I was probably about 20 minutes into Inherent Vice when it dawned on me that I had absolutely no idea what was going on.  Since a lot of info had been wildly thrown around to get the story going, I quickly reasoned with myself that I’d soon get the pieces settled in my mind and then unravel the peculiar case that unlicensed PI Doc Sportello (played by the always great Joaquin Phoenix) had gotten himself wrapped up in.  But I didn’t.  Nope, instead I walked out of the theater still thoroughly baffled about most of the movie.  I can for sure say this though, I had an absolute blast trying to figure out what was going on.  Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film is the smarter, twistier, grittier version of The Big Lebowski, and I loved every goddamn minute of it.  In fact, all I want right now is to re-enter that world and then spend all of my time watching its various weirdos try to sort out their bizarre circumstances.  Thanks for that, PTA.

Please join me in seeing Inherent Vice an unreasonable amount of times.

The Lesson:

Let’s watch that again.  And again.  And then four more times.